Zen and the Art of the Ear-Bud

I bought a pair of ear-buds the other day. They sounded awful. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised, because I paid only $12 for them. At this point you’d be justified in wondering why the editor of a prestigious specialist audio magazine would be buying a pair of $12 ear-buds. It’s not a long story.

I was heading to Melbourne and on the way to the airport realised that I had left my noise-cancelling headphones at home. This was bad enough, because I like using noise-cancelling to cut out the noise during flight, even for a hop as short as Sydney–Melbourne. But the other problem was that I was conducting an interview and needed headphones to monitor the sound, and then to help me transcribe the interview during the flight back.

As I was walking past a Coles supermarket at the time, I thought to myself: ‘No problem, I’ll just pick up a pair of cheap ear-buds and throw them away at the end of the day.’ At the airport I unpacked the buds, which were branded ‘Liquid Ears’, and plugged them into my recorder to check everything was working. Doing so, I immediately discovered the plug was just a little under-sized, presumably to compensate for poor quality control during manufacture, so that the plugs would always fit, even if some were accidentally made bigger than usual.

This wasn’t a good start, because I then suspected I might get some crackles and dropouts while monitoring due to the loose fit of the plug, but at least I was getting sound, so I switched over to my portable audio player to listen to some music while I waited for my boarding call. I started with Simone Dinnerstein playing Bach. I was only about two notes in before I realised something was drastically wrong. The piano sound was completely unrecognisable, instead sounding a little like someone was playing a glockenspiel with cracked keys.

OK, piano is a difficult instrument to reproduce, and these were $12 ear-buds, so I switched to Paul Simon—vocal and guitar. What could go wrong? Oh dear. Just about everything. It was even difficult to tell that it was Paul Simon’s voice. So I put the buds in my pocket and spend the flight reading the newspaper… and observing, with some amazement, how many people on the flight were using Bose’s wireless noise-cancelling headphones.

On arrival at my destination in Melbourne, I tried to use the ear-buds to check recording levels only to discover they now didn’t work at all. Completely dead. Apparently the tough hour-and-a-half trip in my shirt pocket had been too much for them. So I just winged it on levels and made sure I took copious written notes.

At the end of the day, after landing back in Sydney, I had to walk past the same Coles store, so I stopped by with my dead buds and my sales receipt to request a refund. ‘No problems’, said the manager, ‘we also sell Sony ones, so maybe you should have bought one of those.’ As I walked out, I looked down at my computerised refund docket and in the spot marked ‘Reason for return’, he’d written ‘Quality’. # greg borrowman

Don’t miss this special issue celebrating Australian Hi-Fi’s 50th year of publication, with a feature written by the magazine’s founder. The very first issue is now a collector’s item, and we think this 50th Anniversary issue will be too! Also full reviews of JBL’s L100 Classic speakers, B&W’s top-level DB1D subwoofer, Cambnridge Audio’s Azure 851N network player, and Gold Note’s IS-1000 amplifier, and all our regulars!

D’Agostino has released its Momentum HD Preamplifier. ‘This new Momentum HD is a major upgrade to the Momentum preamplifier,’ said designer Dan D’Agostino. ‘It adds HD status for the High Dynamic and High Definition improvements and incorporates substantial advancements in the power supply, audio circuitry, and control sections.’